Two Treatises of Government (Locke)

Two Treatises of Government (Locke)
Name	Two Treatises of Government
Author	John Locke
Country	England
Language	English
Subject	Political philosophy
Published	1689
Media type	Print

Two Treatises of Government (Locke) is a foundational political work by John Locke that profoundly shaped modern liberal thought, constitutionalism, and debates over sovereignty. Composed amid the political turmoil surrounding the Glorious Revolution and responding to earlier polemics such as Robert Filmer's Patriarcha and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, the work argues for natural rights, consent, property, and limited authority. Locke's treatises influenced the development of the English Bill of Rights, the American Revolution, and the intellectual milieu of the Enlightenment, resonating with figures such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Montesquieu, and Benjamin Franklin.

Background and Composition

Locke wrote the treatises in the context of the Restoration and the succession crises involving Charles II, James II, and the accession of William III of England and Mary II of England, reacting to controversies including the royalist arguments of Sir Robert Filmer and the theorizing of Thomas Hobbes. His circle included contemporaries and correspondents such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and members of the Royal Society who shaped Locke's empirical and political commitments. Publication history intersects with the Glorious Revolution and the 1688–1689 parliamentary settlements that produced the Bill of Rights 1689, while Locke's manuscript circulated among intellectuals including John Somers and Anthony Collins before formal print.

Summary of the First Treatise

The First Treatise is primarily a polemic against the patriarchalist doctrines advanced by Sir Robert Filmer in Patriarcha and Other Political Works, disputing the claim that monarchs derive absolute authority from descent from Adam. Locke critiques Filmer by invoking authorities such as William Laud, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf indirectly through debate over scriptural interpretation and legal tradition. He rejects the notion of hereditary divine right defended during the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, challenging arguments employed during the English Civil War and the political theology of Laud and Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford.

Summary of the Second Treatise

The Second Treatise presents Locke's constructive theory: individuals in a state of nature possess natural rights, including life, liberty, and property, and they consent to form political societies to secure those rights. Locke builds on sources and interlocutors such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and the common law tradition embodied in figures like Sir Edward Coke and institutions like the Court of King's Bench and Parliament of England. He outlines the social contract, majority rule, separation of legislative and executive powers, conditional legitimacy of revolution against tyrants—concepts later echoed in the United States Declaration of Independence, writings of Montesquieu, and constitutional developments in Great Britain.

Political Philosophy and Key Themes

Locke develops doctrines of natural law grounded in the writings of Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf while integrating empirical commitments akin to those of Francis Bacon and the method of inquiry associated with the Royal Society. His property theory links labor, appropriation, and value with precedents in the debates of the Virginia Company and colonists like John Smith, informing colonial policies debated in the Plantation of Ulster and British North America. Locke's account of consent and majority rule influenced later constitutional texts including the Constitution of the United States and the English Bill of Rights, and his ideas intersect with reformist strains associated with Glorious Revolution politicians such as John Locke's patrons and readers including Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and John Somers. Themes of toleration and limits on ecclesiastical coercion relate to controversies involving William Penn, James Harrington, and disputes over the Act of Uniformity 1662.

Reception and Influence

Contemporaries and later thinkers from Montesquieu to Thomas Jefferson engaged with Locke's theses; the treatises informed debates in the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and constitutional movements across Europe and the Americas. Political actors and jurists such as William Blackstone, John Adams, James Madison, and litigators of the Somerset v Stewart case responded to Locke's ideas about personal liberty, property, and parliamentary sovereignty. Locke's work provoked criticism from royalists and defenders of prerogative like Robert Filmer's supporters and sparked dialogues with republican theorists such as James Harrington and critics like David Hume. Its influence extended to education and reformers including Jeremy Bentham and Mary Wollstonecraft, and to revolutionary texts such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Authorship, Publication, and Dating

While Locke is unequivocally the author, issues of chronology, redaction, and intended audience have invited scholarly debate; drafts circulated in manuscript among figures in the Whig intellectual network before the 1689 print edition. The 1689 publication followed the Glorious Revolution and aligns with political realignments in the Revolution of 1688–1689; later editions and editorial interventions involved printers and patrons connected to Richard Cromwell's era and the broader print culture that included networks around Samuel Pepys and the Stationers' Company. Modern textual scholarship compares surviving manuscripts, marginalia, and correspondence with contemporaries such as Anthony Collins and John Locke's letters, situating the treatises within the legal and political transformations of late seventeenth-century England.

Category:Political philosophy